Springing Forth

Finally.  The long winter eases into Spring.  Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t it seem as if this year the colors are a bit more lush and the color palate rich with hues and tones that might not have been quite so varied had Winter not conspired to keep us all blanketed in white?

My friend, Becky the retired art teacher, came up the lane yesterday with her husband, James, the farmer.  He’d come to finish clearing some land and she’d come along to watch, bringing a picnic supper for them both.

“People don’t stop and appreciate life anymore,” she said. “They’re all multi-tasking.  Look at this…”  She waved her hand to indicate the mountainside. “When I was younger, I thought Fall had all the colors, but look at those trees and the sky.  It’s an artist’s dream.”

We watched James work his big earth mover, shaking dirt loose from tree trunks and branches and carefully piling them up into a brush pile for burning.  He was like a seven year old boy in a big man’s world.  For a moment I saw my own boys, three and five, playing in the sandbox with their toy excavator and sand pails.

Becky said “James and I are lucky.  He retired and decided to buy a few cows. Now it’s a full time job…for both of us.  We do everything together.  I feel sorry for people who don’t share.  His brother retired and now all he does is sit in his recliner and say how bored he is.  And his wife suddenly had him underfoot.  It’s bad over there.” She shook her head sadly.  “They have nothing in common and they’re not even trying to do anything new.”

Her gaze drifted back to her husband and she smiled wistfully.  “It’s really sad when people can’t learn to share.”

She said the word “share” like she was talking about children sharing toys and suddenly I saw it in that new light.  Sharing lives. Agreeing to disagree. Forgetting to compete. Enjoying the differences. Renewal. Spring.

What a concept.

Life in the Country- When Life Gives You Puny, Make Deviled Eggs

 

Some days you just feel puny, you know?

You’re not feeling bad but you’re not so good either. 

Days like this call for something new. Maybe even a few Something News. 

Today I added sweet potatoes to the deviled eggs and it was good.

Sometimes all it takes is a little spice to push a day from Partly Cloudy to Right Nice.

But in case that didn’t do it- I made Seven Layer Bars- only I rearranged them completely.  They’re now Landfill Bars…Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookie crust (without the chocolate chips), layered with Dulce de Leche, bittersweet chocolate chips, Kraft Caramel chips, semisweet chocolate chips and topped with coconut flakes and more Dulce de Leche. 

Sometimes it takes a  little overdose of sweetness to let a bit more light into an otherwise dreary day.

That’s how we do dull, gray days here in the holler.  We sugar and spice ‘em up until they shine.

 

 

 

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My New Boyfriend and My Other New Boyfriend Come Calling

This is my new boyfriend. 

He arrived yesterday afternoon at the cabin door, hanging back behind my other new boyfriend, Hank.

There he was, living proof that “If you ain’t the lead dog, the view never changes,” is a lie- Because from the second our eyes met, I knew Hank was in danger of losing his Number One spot in my heart.

I think Hank knew it too.

But BoBo, (That’s what I called him), was a sport about the whole deal and did his best to smooth the situation over.  And soon Hank was cool with the whole idea.

Until it came time to play the game Hank and I always play alone- Fetch.

Bobo caught on right quick and therein lay the trouble…Hank will share me in a heartbeat, but when it came to the bone…not so much with the peace and brotherhood, what’s mine is ours notion.

    There were a few tense moments, a bit of the Run for Your Life game…

 

And then all was forgiven as I seemed to have been forgotten…

 

  Oh well, I’ll make do I suppose.

It’s All A Blur…

It’s all over too quickly. Babies to boys to men.

  But this new phase, this Man phase…it’s pretty cool. 

Life in the Country- Transforming the Big Ugly

  Back when I moved to the little log cabin up the holler there was no Big Ugly.  Instead, there was a beautiful and very old Black Walnut tree and beside it, the log cabin remains of a blacksmith’s shop.

But then we found the huge, rotted hole in the very center of the Walnut tree and upon further consultation with tree doctors and such, realized it was dying.  It would have to be removed if we wanted to ensure that the cabin would not be crushed when the tree eventually fell.

The day we lost the Black Walnut was a very sad day indeed.  I stroked its trunk and thought of all the sites it had witnessed.  I thanked the tree silently for its years of service to the inhabitants of the holler.

The tree cutters had no such respect…

Hence, the resulting Big Ugly…a plot of land so filled with clay and rock that nothing grew where the tree once stood.  In fact, last year, it was all I could do to coax two small gourds into existence on this large, barren spot.

When I had 5 days off this past Easter weekend, I immediately generated a list of to-dos.  None of them included addressing the Big Ugly.  Painting the back fence and cabin exterior held the top two spots but when the weather forecast said rain was going to be my constant companion, I took a good, long look at the abandoned Ugly.

It was time for something to be done.

Wood needed to be moved, broken glass, rusty metal and true treasures sorted and carted off to their respective places.

  Then load after load after load of rich soil from the cleared creek beds had to be hand-shoveled and carried to their new garden home.

Little bits and pieces began to fall into place as a picture formed slowly in my head.

The stump became a planter.

  And then, the grand idea…The Big Ugly should have a trellis, an entrance into what will one day become my secret garden, a beautiful welcome covered in blue and white morning glories and moonflower vines.

 

The only requirement- the Big Ugly’s make-over should cost virtually nothing and come from objects found on the land. 

And so began the search…stepping stones from the base of trees or the edge of creeks, lichen-covered branches hauled down off the ridgeline and across the soil road, bits of moss carefully transported from nearby trails and gently smushed in-between rock steps.

 

It took 3 days and all in all, it still looks rough but the bones are there now.  A bird bath and feeder are in the works.  A white lilac looking for a home will take up residence in the back left corner and a white Iceberg rose will nestle down beside the stump. Perhaps by mid-summer the flowers will be in bloom and the Big Ugly will become the Big Beautiful.

Soon…

 

Very soon…

 

 

 

Life in Town- A Winter Blanket

Here in town the wild life sticks mainly to the backyard...

Last night we were all out, watching as the snow began to fall.

By morning we were wrapped in a beautiful blanket that wrapped the neighborhood in white and christened the gray winter blahs with promise.

Even Dirty Larry, the Youngest Unnamed One's elderly Toyota, looked brighter in white.

St. Christopher took up quite a collection.

All in all, a beautiful morning.

...for making a hot cup of tea, snuggling down under my throw and tending to that which I have left undone- editing...

Saturday Morning in the Country

A perfect morning for an explore...Rain coming in fits and starts...the temperature warming as the night gave way and allowed the possibility of daylight in.

A good day for sitting by the woodstove and writing...or not.

Weepy, Raucous, Epiphanies of Grief

 

On Saturday it will be two years since my Dad, the Wisest Man in the Universe, left.

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you know it all really started around the time we learned he was dying and for the first year, I chronicled our long goodbye.

Really, it was such a blast.  It was one of the best ever times of my life.  In dying, Dad taught me more about living and life than I could ever hope to learn on my own without him.

 

God, I miss him.

If you've been reading my posts for very long, you also know how I struggled with losing him, looking for signs that he was still present, somewhere close at hand, perhaps on the other side of an invisible curtain, just not so far away.

There were a few dreams.  Powerful, intense visits in which he talked about Heaven or once, just hugged me so tight I felt it for days.

Then there were the pennies, mysterious pennies that appeared from nowhere and always when I needed him the most.  Signs, I felt certain, that he was pitching them from behind an invisible chink in Heaven's fence.

It was sometimes just enough to keep me from sinking.

But as this two year mark steadily creeps closer, I have felt nothing but his absence.

I am like Jodi Foster surrounded by a sea of giant listening satellites, listening to the vast, wooshing silence of outer space and hoping for a discernable signal.

The crushing grief is gone for the most part.  I have settled in for the steady, plodding marathon that is life without my mentor and best, true friend.

I know he's gone but I can carry him with me, always.

Still it would've been nice, would be nice, to reach out and hug him.

On one of those bittersweet, joyous days in which I hadn't been swamped with loss and was, in fact, having a blast with my boys, I walked into the kitchen and caught them, red-handed, hiding pennies for me to find.

I was devastated.  All this time.  All those pennies.  It had been my boys, tricking me and laughing behind my gullible back?

I couldn't let them see how awful I felt.

A few days later an epiphany, probably epiphany number 112 since Dad died, hit me.

Although they swore it was the first and only time they'd hidden pennies for me to find, I truly doubt this.  But I realized it was not done out of cruelty. My boys have always been too loving to hurt me like that.  They were doing something their grandfather would've understood completely- the good and the bad.  It was a sort of reverse-generation Santa Claus.

I remembered all their pats on the back and the awkward hugs they'd given me when I'd dissolved into sudden tears at some silly commercial that reminded me of Dad.

I realized, again, my father lives on in my boys.  His goodness, his kindness, his wicked sense of humor- it is in all of us and in that way, Dad is never truly gone.

The last time I saw my sister we were sitting at the dinner table when she suddenly gasped.  Her eyes filled with tears and she reached across the table to touch my fingers.  "You have Dad's hands," she breathed. 

She stared at them for a long moment then smiled.  "That much be such a comfort, to look down and see his hands, always there."

 

I can't look at them now without remembering him.

And on the 27th, I won't visit his grave to pay my respects. I don't have to seek him out and honor a piece of granite.  I am my father's monument.  Each of us who loved, love, him and try to carry some little piece of his wisdom and mercy forward, we are the monuments to his life on this earth.  It's up to us to find him within us and carry his love forward into our own juicy lives.

Sneaking Up on Geezerhood...

 

This is the time of year when evening sneaks up on us early, filling up the hollar before we're ready to call it a day.  This one particular night caught me out wandering.  I'd stopped to examine some berries, take pictures of an old pot and to wonder if there truly were bears about.

 

At the edge of the property, down by the neighbor's creek junction, I sat down to stare up across the lawn from a new angle.  Then, on account of I'm getting old, it felt good to stay that way- slumped down in the teacup saucer shaped spot at the bottom of the yard, relaxing back against the grassy rim as I snapped picture after picture.

It's hard- facing down geezer-hood.  Deep inside, there's still this cool, hippy chick wanting to stay relevant...or at least fake it.

 

But age is sneaking up behind me, whispering in my ear as I visit the nursing home..."This is you one day," it says. 

 

I've got to turn this mess around.  I've got to retrieve my old lady mojo and get to steppin'!

Last Blush of Summer Blooms

I know fall is coming.  The vegetable vines are withering away.  The tomatoes are thick-skinned and pulpy.  But after the rain, a fresh, final smattering of roses appeared. 

 

 

And the phlox is just as robust as ever.

 

The Morning Glories are seizing their moment in the sun, piggy-backing along the arching branches of the Zephrine Drouhin rose bush.